Shakespeare Performances in London and Stratford-upon-Avon 1984–5

Summary

This was a year of star performances and strong readings. Ian McKellen, Ben Kingsley, Anton Lesser, Irene Worth and Juliet Stevenson played major tragic roles for the two major companies, while Nicky Henson brought unusual distinction to the clowning at Stratford. Directors were equally self-assertive. Twelve years ago John Russell Brown argued, in Free Shakespeare, for a simplified actors’ theatre which resisted ‘one-sided interpretations, however subtle or well-informed’. A feminist Troilus and Cressida, a Jungian As You Like It, and an Ealing Comedy Merry Wives of Windsor in the space of a single season suggested that his ideas had yet to take root.

Distinctive acting and distinctive interpretation did not, however, always coincide. Ian McKellen's Coriolanus at the National Theatre in December 1984 was a bravura performance of the kind which Antony Sher's Richard III had reintroduced to the English stage six months before. Its effect, unfortunately, was rather different and it was so because Peter Hall's Coriolanus, though notionally the same production, was persistently at odds with it.